Friday, July 30, 2010

Here’s a super-quick idea I created back in December. I needed centerpieces for the banquet tables for a local Harley Owners Group (HOG) Christmas party. The party theme was “Hoe-down,” and the audience was motorcycle enthusiasts. Here are the materials I used, no more than $1 for each item:

Starting with a small glass candle jar and “country-looking” silk flowers, I first pushed a chunk of florist’s foam down into each jar. (You can hot-glue it if you like; I left mine loose because I wanted the flowers to be removable.) I separated the blooms on their stems from each bunch of flowers and arranged them in the foam so they created a nice “poof” over the top of the container:

To decorate the jar, I wrapped each one in a brightly-colored bandana. This fit right in with the barn-dance theme, and bikers use them all the time as head coverings. I folded the corners of each bandana in so it made a smaller square:

Then, I gathered the folded bandana up around the jar and tied it together using a couple lengths of raffia.

The result was a cute, quick centerpiece that fit the theme. And, when we gave them away at the end of the evening, 22 bikers each got a new bandana out of the deal!

For today's post I thought I would go out on a limb and share some of my "art." I don’t make any claims to being an artist. From piano lessons to desktop publishing and everything in between, I consider myself a bit of a trained monkey (and I mean that in the nicest possible way - “monkey see, monkey do, sometimes with passable results!”).

One of the artistic endeavors that I’ve practiced quite a bit is the art of decorative painting. While I have never been able to re-create to my complete satisfaction the designs and strokes of published teachers such as Priscilla Hauser and Donna Dewberry, I’ve nonetheless been pleased enough with my results that I actually painted a variety of items one year as Christmas gifts - which means that I was for once not entirely horrified by my own efforts - and those items actually saw the light of day in someone else’s home.

Here are a few samples of my many painting projects, starting with one of my favorites - a brag book/photo album with roses and greenery:Crackle-finished plaque for my grand-daughter:

Romantic Christmas ornaments (given to a complete stranger in an ornament swap!):

Another photo album, this time with geraniums and hand-painted calligraphy:

A curb-find cabinet that I painted pink, embellished, and then hung on my old patio, pre-flood:

Tableware caddy painted with cherries and given to my mother-in-law (she's still using it!):

I haven’t painted since we moved to our new house, but I DID rescue my rack of craft paints so I really have no excuse. One thing I lost, though: my original sketchbook full of practice strokes and pictures, which I lovingly called "Bad Art." Here are a couple of surviving images I had scanned out of it for other uses before it was destroyed - a "signature" graphic I used in an online forum with magnolias and my username, "Janetgia"; and below it, a baby robin I painted, then scanned and used as an avatar in another forum:

I've certainly got to spend some time practicing my skills before I feel confident enough to give something away again!

Have you ever tried tole, One Stroke, or any other type of decorative painting? What did you think of the results?